Baseball fields are well known and have various boundaries where dirt surfaces abut or adjoin against turf surfaces. For example, the dirt in the infield is bounded along its inside boundary, i.e. the boundary that is closest to home plate, by the outermost edge of the infield grass. Similarly, the dirt in the infield is bounded along its outside boundary, i.e. the boundary that is furthest from home plate, by the innermost edge of the outfield grass. In a similar fashion, the outermost edge of the outfield grass is bounded along a boundary formed by the dirt of the warning track. These are all examples of boundaries in which a turf surface adjoins a relatively soft surface, such as but not limited to dirt, which can be cut or sliced through, as opposed to adjoining a hard surface, such as a sidewalk, which cannot be cut or sliced through without damaging the hard surface.
One problem with boundaries such as those described above in a baseball field is the ability of the grass in the turf surface to overgrow the desired boundary and to intrude onto and into the dirt surface. For example, Bermuda grass has many desirable properties that make it a grass that is commonly used on baseball fields. However, Bermuda grass propagates and spreads by sending out above ground runners or stolons and below ground rhizomes (basically underground runners) from which new growth will sprout. This new growth of Bermuda grass, which accounts for the desirable feature that Bermuda grass can repair or heal itself through new growth, inevitably causes grass to begin to appear on top of or to sprout up through the adjoining dirt surfaces of a baseball field.
However, the overgrowth of the Bermuda grass does not propagate itself over the dirt surfaces in a uniform fashion, but does so in an irregular and unpredictable manner. Thus, the boundary between the turf surface and the dirt surface soon takes on a jagged, irregular and unkempt look where initially there had been a clean edge demarking the two surfaces. This is unsightly and unattractive to many people and therefore undesirable. And, if left unchecked, the overgrowth of the Bermuda grass could eventually dramatically shorten the width of the dirt surfaces in the baseball field. This is undesirable from both a player safety standpoint and from a baseball field standards standpoint, namely the skinned or dirt areas of the infield should have certain prescribed dimensions.
Another problem that arises on baseball fields is a build up of dirt along the boundary between the turf and dirt surfaces. This can be corrected to some extent by brushing the dirt build up away from the boundary and back onto the dirt surface. However, such brushing eventually becomes ineffective and the dirt build up eventually forms a raised ridge or lip along the boundary. This raised lip poses safety hazards to the players, e.g. an infielder can trip on the lip as the infielder runs to the outfield to catch a short fly ball. If such lips are formed by the dirt build up, they must be removed to ensure the field is safe to play on.
Thus, the need to restore a clean edge to the boundaries between the turf and dirt surfaces of a baseball field, namely to remove the overgrowth of the grass or to remove any raised lips formed by dirt build up, has been recognized in the art. One way of doing this is to exclusively use hand tools, such as spades, to edge along the boundary entirely by hand. This is obviously highly labor intensive given the long distances that these boundaries have on a baseball field. For example, the boundary between the outermost edge of the outfield and the warning track is itself hundreds of feet long. It would take workers many hours of work to properly edge that one boundary alone. The costs involved in using hand labor alone for such edging are prohibitive.
In an effort to cut down the amount of labor required, some edging has been done on baseball fields using a common walk behind lawn edger of the type used to edge along a sidewalk or the like. Such a lawn edger has a blade that rotates in a vertical cutting plane about a substantially horizontal axis. When used on a baseball field, the blade of this type of lawn edger cuts a single vertical slit into the turf surface along the intended boundary between the turf and dirt surfaces. This slit serves to separate the grass overgrowth that has intruded into the dirt surface from the grass that should properly lie along the edge of the boundary.
However, because of the basic nature of Bermuda grass, the overgrowth is rather firmly anchored to the dirt surface by the runners, stolons and rhizomes that form the mechanism by which the overgrowth was propagated. Thus, workers still need to follow along the slit created by the lawn edger to cut through and free the overgrowth from the dirt. This is commonly done using a hand tool known as a hula hoe. While this method of edging using a powered lawn edger is less labor intensive than one relying solely on hand labor, it still involves a fair amount of such hand labor due to the manual hoeing step involved.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art to provide a turf edger that can effectively and productively cut a clean edge along boundaries between turf and soft non-turf surfaces, such as the dirt surfaces found on baseball fields, in a way that significantly reduces or eliminates the amount of hand labor that was previously required. This invention provides a turf edger that solves that need.